ZIONIST  PUBLICATIONS 


Zionism  aims  to  create  a  publicly-secured,  legally-assured 
home  for  the  Jewish  People  in  Palestine. —  Basle  Program 


Palestine  and  Jewish 
Nationalism 


Reprinted  from  The  Round  Table 
March,  1918 


ZIONIST  ORGANIZATION  OF  AMERICA 

55  Fifth  Avenue,  New  York  City 
1918 


PALESTINE  AND  JEWISH 
NATIONALISM 


Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 
in  2014 


https://archive.org/details/palestinejewishnOOzion 


Palestine  and  Jewish  Nationalism 


Among  all  the  surprises  of  the  war  there  is  perhaps 
none  more  striking  than  the  emergence  of  Zionism,  the 
Jewish  national  movement,  from  comparative  obscurity 
into  the  sunshine  of  popular  acclamation  and  interna- 
tional sanction.    Four  years  ago  Zionism  lay  outside  the 
orbit  of  the  student  of  political  affairs.    It  had,  indeed, 
solid  achievements  to  its  credit.    It  had  created  a  world- 
wide organization,  numbering  some  quarter  of  a  million 
of  Jews  of  every  possible  political  allegiance  and  every 
possible  shade  of  belief.    The  regeneration  of  Palestine 
by  means  of  Jewish  agricultural  and  urban  settlements 
had  made  considerable  progress,  despite  the  manifold 
obstacles  imposed — rather  passively  than  actively — by 
Turkish  rule,  and  there  had  been  a  marked  growth  of 
Jewish  national  sentiment  in  these  settlements,  which 
found  expression  in  1913  in  a  revolt  against  an  attempt 
to  oust  Hebrew  in  favor  of  German  as  the  language  of 
instruction  in  some  schools  controlled  by  a  German- 
Jewish  organization  opposed  to  Zionism.    When  war 
broke  out  Zionists  were  busy  with  a  scheme  for  a  He- 
brew University  in  Jerusalem,  which  would  have  been — 
and  will  be — a  rallying  point  of  Hebrew  scholarship  and 
idealism  and  a  powerful  means  of  restoring  to  Hebraism 
its  rightful  place  in  the  life  of  the  civilized  world.  These 
phenomena  pointed  to  the  steady  if  not  rapid  or  easy 


6 


PALESTINE  AND  JEWISH  NATIONALISM 


development  of  a  self-conscious  and  self-dependent  na- 
tional centre  of  Jewry  and  of  Judaism  in  Palestine.  But 
there  was  nothing  to  attract  the  attention  of  the  states- 
man to  what  Zionism  had  done  and  what  its  achieve- 
ments foreshadowed.  Though  various  Governments  had 
on  occasion  expressed  sympathy  with  the  aims  of  Zion- 
ism, and  the  British  Government  in  particular  had  made 
the  Zionist  Movement  an  offer  (which  proved  abortive) 
of  a  territory  in  East  Africa  as  the  home  of  a  Jewish 
settlement  with  some  measure  of  autonomy,  Zionism 
was  not,  and  had  no  apparent  prospect  of  becoming,  a 
factor  to  be  reckoned  with  in  international  politics. 

Now,  almost  suddenly,  all  that  is  changed.  Thanks 
to  the  breadth  and  sincerity  of  British  statesmanship,  to 
the  inherent  justice  of  its  own  aims,  and  to  the  ability 
with  which  those  aims  have  been  presented,  Zionism  has 
received  the  official  approval  of  the  British  Government 
—an  approval  which,  in  the  circumstances  in  which  it 
was  given,  makes  the  realization  of  the  objects  of  Zion- 
ism one  of  the  avowed  war-aims  of  the  Allied  Powers. 
The  way  in  which  the  Government's  declaration  of  sup- 
port has  been  received  shows  that  substantially  it  speaks 
the  mind  of  the  whole  British  nation,  and  indeed  of  the 
whole  Commonwealth.    And  while,  no  doubt,  for  many 
people  the  declaration  obtained  its  special  significance  by 
virtue  of  its  coincidence  in  time  with  the  -victorious  ad- 
vance of  British  troops  in  Palestine,  it  is  none  the  less 
true  that  the  permanent  occupation  of  Palestine  by  Great 
Britain  is  in  no  sense  made  a  condition  of  the  support 
to  be  accorded  by  Great  Britain  and  her  Allies  to  Zion- 
ism.  Mr.  Lloyd  George,  in  his  statement  of  British  war- 


PALESTINE  AND  JEWISH  NATIONALISM  7 


aims  on  January  5th,  did  not  stipulate  for  a  British  Pales 
tine,  but  laid  it  down  that  the  "separate  national  condi- 
tions" of  Palestine  must  be  recognized;  and  this  state- 
ment, taken  in  conjunction  with  the  Government's  earlier 
declaration,  means  that,  in  whatever  way  the  political 
future  of  Palestine  may  be  determined  by  the  peace  set- 
tlement, Great  Britain  will  insist  on  explicit  recognition 
of  the  right  of  the  Jewish  people  to  establish  there  its 
"national  home."  This  position  accords  both  with  the 
general  spirit  of  Allied  war-aims  and  with  the  require- 
ments of  Zionism,  which,  while  it  imperatively  needs 
a  just,  stable,  and  progressive  government  in  Palestine, 
and  knows  how  such  a  government  is  mosj  Likely  to  be 
obtained,  would  obviously  be  travelling  beyond  its 
proper  sphere  if  it  attempted  to  insist  on  the  transference 
of  Palestine  to  the  control  of  one  or  more  specified 
Power  or  Powers. 

Be  that  as  it  may,  the  Zionist  question  lias  definitely 
attained  political  importance  of  the  first  rank,  and  the 
time  is  ripe  for  an  attempt  to  understand  what  Zionism 
is,  what  it  has  done,  and  what  it  aims  at  creating.  What 
is  precisely  the  place  of  Palestine  in  the  Jewish  scheme 
of  things?  What  have  Jews  done  in  practice  to  substan- 
tiate the  claim  that  they  can  build  a  "national  home"  for 
themselves  in  Palestine,  and  ought  to  be  given  facilities 
for  doing  so?  What  political  conditions  must  be  created 
as  regards  Palestine  if  Jewish  hopes  are  to  be  realized? 
And  what  are  likely  to  be  the  consequences,  both  imme- 
diate and  more  remote,  of  the  establishment  of  a  Jewish 
"national  home"  in  Palestine?  These  are  among  the 
questions  that  call  for  an  answer. 


8 


PALESTINE  AND  JEWISH  NATIONALISM 


J.  What  Palestine  Means  to  the  Jew 
The  Jewish  love  of  Palestine  is  a  thing  unique  in  its 
kind,  and  its  particular  quality  requires  elucidation  if 
the  meaning  of  Jewish  nationalism  and  the  significance 
of  the  Jewish  return  to  Palestine  are  to  be  understood 
at  all. 

Love  of  his  country  is  a  natural  instinct  of  the  normal 
man,  an  instinct  capable  of  calling  forth  the  utmost  en- 
deavor and  sacrifice  of  which  he  is  capable.  Nor  does 
the  attachment  necessarily  cease  when  a  man  leaves  his 
own  country  for  another.  Not  only  does  the  emigrant 
himself  retain  the  sentiment,  but  he  may  transmit  it  to 
his  children  and  his  children's  children,  so  that  it  persists 
through  generations  of  men  who  have  never  set  foot  in 
"the  old  country."  But  this  sentiment  does  not  live  and 
grow  in  the  hearts  of  the  absent  except  on  the  prop  of 
some  concrete  connection.  Contact  is  maintained  through 
friends  and  relations  who  remain  behind ;  the  sentiment, 
the  sr^irjnUialJact,  finds  concrete  expression  and  nourish- 
ment in  the  interchange  of  letters,  of  newspapers,  of  per- 
sonal visits.  At  the  very  least,  there  is  the  living  recollec- 
tion of  some  ancestor  who  once  lived  himself  in  "the  old 
country,"  and  whose  portrait,  perhaps,  is  treasured  as  a 
family  relic.  When  every  concrete  connection  of  this  kind 
—trivial  in  itself,  but  important  because  it  is  the  material 
basis  of  something  spiritual— has  vanished,  the  sentiment 
can  scarcely  survive,  and  sooner  or  later  the  descendants 
of  those  who  left  "the  old  country"  become  merged  heart 
and  soul  in  the  life  of  the  new. 

With  the  Jews  and  Palestine  the  case  is  very  different. 
It  is  not,  perhaps,  so  different  as  might  appear  at  first 


PALESTINE  AND  JEWISH  NATIONALISM 


9 


sight;  for,  though  the  number  of  Jews  who  have  had  any 
concrete  personal  connection  with  Palestine  during  the  last 
fifteen  centuries  or  more  must  have  hern  an  insignificant 
minority,  yet  throughout  that  period,  whenever  there  have 
been  Jews  in  Palestine,  the  collection  of  funds  for  their 
maintenance  has  been  recognized  as  an  integral  feature  in 
the  life  of  every  traditional  Jewish  community  elsewhere. 
But  the  existence  of  a  link  of  this  kind  is  an  effect,  not  a 
cause,  of  the  Jewish  love  of  Palestine.  There  seems  to  be 
no  reason  in  the  nature  of  things  why  a  Jew  in  Russia 
should  contribute  money  for  the  support  of  lews  in  [eru- 
salem  whom  he  does  not  know,  and  with  w  hom  he  has  no 
personal  contact  of  even  the  most  indirect  kind.  The  fact 
is,  that  the  link  between  the  Jew  and  Palestine  is  a  national 
link  in  the  most  absolute  sense — in  the  sense  of  being  en- 
tirely independent  of  any  sort  of  personal  connection.  The 
individual  Jew  may  live  his  life  outside  Palestine,  and  his 
tradition  gives  him  a  scheme  of  values  and  a  code  of  relig- 
ious, ethical  and  social  practice  which  make  his  life  dis- 
tinctively Jewish.  He  may  have  no  idea  that  there  will  be 
any  concrete  restoration  of  Jewish  national  life  in  Palestine 
before  the  Messiah  comes  to  fulfil  the  promise  of  the  Re- 
turn. But  deep  down  in  the  roots  of  his  being,  bound  up 
with  the  very  sense  of  his  Jewishness,  there  is  the  convic- 
tion that  until  the  Return  takes  place  his  nation  is  in  exile, 
because,  however  satisfactorily  he  and  millions  of  other 
Jews  may  adjust  themselves  to  their  different  environ- 
ments, the  life  of  his  nation  cannot  be  properly  lived  except 
in  Palestine.  This  it  is  that  explains  why  for  so  many 
centuries  the  Jewish  love  of  Palestine  has  found  its  most 
characteristic  expressions  not  in  political  effort  for  the  re- 


10         PALESTINE  AND  JEWISH  NATIONALISM 


covery  of  the  country,  and  not  even  in  pilgrimages  (though 
these  have  not  been  wanting),  but  in  constant  prayer  for  the 
restoration  of  the  Temple  as  the  symbol  of  the  restoration 
of  the  full  Jewish  life;  in  the  elaboration  and  study  of  re- 
ligious rites  which  cannot  be  performed  outside  Palestine; 
above  all,  in  the  attitude  of  mind  expressed  in  the  Rab- 
binic saying  that  the  Divine  Presence  is  itself  in  exile, 
and  will  be  restored  to  its  home  only  with  the  restoration 
of  Israel.  The  feeling  underlying  all  these  phenomena, 
and  others  of  the  same  kind,  is  not  one  of  personal  dis- 
satisfaction, of  individual  home-sickness  or  longing  for 
something  that  the  individual  has  lost,  but  one  of  national 
incompleteness. 

The  Jewish  love  of  Palestine,  then,  as  it  has  persisted 
through  centuries  of  estrangement  between  the  people  and 
the  land,  is  peculiar  in  its  selflessness  and  its  spiritual  qual- 
ity. And  that  fact  has  given  rise  to  misunderstanding 
among  men  whose  conceptions  of  the  relation  between  the 
spiritual  and  the  material  and  between  nationality  and  re- 
ligion are  derived  from  the  theory  and  practice  of  modern 
Europe,  and  not  least  among  those  Jews  who  have  adopted 
the  European  standpoint  as  a  matter  of  course  in  the  pro- 
cess of  assimilation  to  their  environment.  From  that  stand- 
point the  Jewish  love  of  Palestine  comes  naturally  and  al- 
most inevitably  to  be  regarded  as  something  purely  relig- 
ious, as  a  feeling  which  has  for  its  object  not  a  particular 
piece  of  territory  on  the  eastern  side  of  the  Mediterranean, 
but  simply  a  "spiritual  Zion."  Palestine,  it  is  supposed, 
has  become  for  the  Jews  merely  an  abstraction,  merely  a 
symbol  for  the  realization  of  their  religious  and  ethical 
ideals :  the  Return,  so  long  and  earnestly  hoped  and  prayed 


PALESTINE  AND  JEWISH  NATIONALISM  11 

for,  does  not  mean  a  physical  restoration  to  the  physical 
land,  but  merely  symbolizes  the  establishment  of  the  King- 
dom of  God  and  the  empire  of  righteousness.  Christianity 
has  helped  to  give  currency  to  this  notion  by  its  practice 
of  using  the  concrete  terms  of  Jewish  history  in  a  spiritual 
sense  of  its  own.  But  nothing  could  in  fact  be  more  op- 
posed to  the  whole  spirit  and  tendency  of  Jewish  teaching. 
Judaism  knows  nothing  of  a  "new  Jerusalem"  which  exists 
only  in  Heaven.  Judaism  spiritualizes  the  material,  but 
for  Judaism  to  spiritualize  is  not  to  dematerialize.  The 
material  remains  material;  but  it  derives  a  spiritual  value 
by  virtue  of  its  being  regarded  as  the  necessary  basis  of 
an  idea.  Body  is  body  and  spirit  is  spirit,  but  in  life  the 
two  are  necessarily  interdependent,  and  if  it  is  the  spirit 
that  gives  meaning  to  the  body,  it  is  the  body  that  gives  to 
the  spirit  the  possibility  of  expression  and  activity.  Through- 
out the  whole  range  of  Jewish  ideas  there  runs  this  concep- 
tion of  a  relation  between  body  and  spirit  which  is  such 
that,  while  the  spiritual  is  supreme,  the  material  has  a  neces- 
sary part  to  play,  and  would  lose  its  power  of  playing  that 
part  if  it  were  transmuted  into  something  merely  abstract 
or  symbolical. 

What  Palestine  means  to  the  Jew  can  be  understood  only 
in  the  light  of  this  Jewish  attitude  to  the  problem  of  body 
and  spirit.  In  the  course  of  centuries  of  exile  Palestine  has 
become  spiritualized — but  spiritualized  in  the  Jewish  sense. 
It  has  not  become,  and  never  can  become,  an  abstraction 
or  a  symbol.  It  is  the  actual,  physical  land  that  matters, 
though  its  geographical  position  and  its  physical  features 
are  absolutely  unknown  to  millions  of  those  who  pray  for 
it.    If  once  the  masses  of  Jews  were  to  abandon  their  belief 


12         PALESTINE  AND  JEWISH  NATIQNALISM 


in  the  future  restoration  of  Palestine  in  favor  of  a  belief 
in  a  "spiritual  Zion,"  to  be  realized  in  the  world  to  come, 
the  principle  of  Jewish  cohesion  would  be  gone,  and  the 
Jews  would  soon  cease  to  exist  as  a  distinct  human  group. 
But,  on  the  other  hand,  if  the  spiritual  ideal  which  is  asso- 
ciated with  Palestine  in  the  mind  of  the  Jew  were  removed 
— if  his  love  of  Palestine  became  simply  the  desire  for  a 
country  with  so  much  milk  and  honey,  so  much  natural 
wealth,  so  many  harbors,  so  much  scenic  beauty — then  Jew- 
ish nationalism  would  equally  be  a  dead  thing  and  "the 
Jewish  people"  an  empty  phrase.  It  is  the  combination  of 
the  material  and  the  spiritual  element,  each  indispensable  to 
the  other,  that  gives  its  specific  quality  to  the  Palestine- 
sense  of  the  Jewish  people.  It  is  this  alone  that  explains  the 
extraordinary  persistence  of  the  feeling  of  exile  in  a  people 
which  has  ceased  to  be  a  nation  in  the  ordinary  sense,  has 
built  up  prosperous  communities  in  all  parts  of  the  world, 
and  has  provided  itself  with  a  way  of  life  which  is  capable 
of  adjustment  to  the  most  widely  differing  environments. 
That  feeling  of  exile  is,  as  was  said  above,  a  feeling  of 
national  incompleteness :  an  instinctive  recognition  of  the 
fact  that  in  the  national  life  the  elements  of  body  and  spirit 
are  not  developing  side  by  side  and  co-operating  as  they 
must  do  for  its  full  self-realization,  because  the  material 
basis— the  national  land— is  lacking,  and  whatever  spiritual 
development  takes  place  without  it  can  be  nothing  more 
than  a  semblance  of  life. 

It  is  instructive  in  this  connection  to  contrast  the  posi- 
tion of  Palestine  in  the  life  of  the  Jewish  people  with  that 
of  Greece  in  the  life  of  the  ancient  Greeks.  Probably 
the  Greeks  were  much  more  alive  than  the  Hebrews  to  the 


PALESTINE  AND  JEWISH  NATIONALISM  13 


physical  beauty  of  their  country,  and  loved  their  country 
for  its  own  sake  in  a  way  of  which  ancient  Hebrew  liter- 
ature shows  little  if  any  trace.   But  their  national  conscious- 
ness was  independent  of  the  particular  piece  of  territory 
which  they  called  Hellas.    Their  sense  of  the  difference 
between  themselves  and  other  human  groups  had  its  roots 
mainly  in  two  things — in  difference  of  language  and  in 
difference  of  political  institutions.    And  they  were  able  to 
carry  their  language  and  their  City  State  with  them  to  other 
countries.    They  could  be  as  Greek  in  Italy  as  in  Hellas; 
they  could  create  a  great  centre  of  Hellenism  in  Egypt.  | 
The  Hebrews,  on  the  other  hand,  when  they  left  Palestine 
ceased  to  speak  Hebrew,  and  adopted  for  every-day  pur-^ 
poses  the  language  of  the  land  in  which  they  settled;  and 
they  regarded  the  communal  organizations  which  they  built 
up  as  nothing  more  than  temporary  expedients.    It  could 
never  occur  to  them  that  their  own  distinctive  form  of  na- 
tional life  might  be  lived  in  its  completeness  as  well  out- 
side as  in  Palestine.   They  took  Palestine  with  them  in  their 
hearts:  it  remained  an  essential  element  in  their  national 
consciousness.   Their  physical  land  and  their  spiritual  ideas 
were  inseparable,  and  "to  sing  the  song  of  the  Lord  in  a 
strange  land"  was  an  impossibility. 

In  the  light  of  what  has  been.said  it  will  be  clear  that 
the  modern  Jewish  aspiration  for  a  return  to  Palestine  is 
not  simply— is  not  fundamentally— a  desire  to  change  po- 
litical conditions  for  the  benefit  of  a  particular  nation.  It  is 
first  and  foremost  a  natural  expression  of  his  Judaism  on 
the  part  of  the  modern  Jew.  It  is  as  true  to-day  as  it  ever 
was  that  the  ideas  of  the  Jewish  God,  the  Jewish  way  of 
life,  the  Jewish  people  and  Palestine  are  inextricably  bound 


14         PALESTINE  AND  JEWISH  NATIONALISM 


together,  are  in  fact  but  different  facets  of  one  central 
principle  which  is  the  principium  individuationis  of  the  Jew- 
ish people.    None  the  less,  modern  Jewish  nationalism  is 
like  the  nationalism  of  other  peoples,  an  attempt  at  self-pres- 
ervation.   Its  differentia  is. that  in  the  Jewish  people  the 
idea  of  self-preservation  is  more  consciously  bound  up  with 
the  sense  of  universal  human  values  and  ideals.    And  for 
that  reason  it  may  claim  with  some  justice  that  its  realiza- 
tion will  be  fraught  with  consequences  of  peculiar  impor- 
tance to  humanity  at  large.    If  every  nation,  by  virtue  of 
feeling  itself  a  nation— no  matter  what  may  be  the  elements 
of  its  national  consciousness— is  regarded  as  having  an  in- 
defeasible right  to  the  opportunity  of  self-development,  and 
if  the  general  concession  of  this  opportunity  will  enrich 
human  life,  then  surely  humanity  should  reap  a  peculiarly 
rich  harvest  through  the  free  development  of  a  nation  whose 
national  consciousness  has  become  bound  up  with  its  sense 
of  universal  spiritual  values.    In  a  very  real  sense  the  Jew- 
ish nationalist  may  claim  that  "Palestine  for  the  Jews" 
means  "Palestine  for  the  world,"  not  because  he  wants 
Palestine  to  be  anything  but  distinctively  Jewish,  but  be- 
cause he  feels  that  the  more  distinctively  and  truly  Jewish 
it  is,  the  greater  will  be  its  influence  on  the  world  "in  the 
direction  of  establishing  3  truer  understanding  of  the  right 
relation  between  body  and  spirit,  between  the  individual 
nation  and  the  divine  idea  of  human  brotherhood. 

But  if  modern  Jewish  nationalism,  standing  as  it  does  in 
the  closest  relation  to  the  fundamentals  of  Jewish  thought, 
regards  itself  as  charged  in  some  degree  with  the  fulfilment 
ot  the  universal  purpose  which  works  through  Jewish  his- 
tory, it  remains  none  the  less  true  thai  there  is  a  gulf  fixed 


PALESTINE  AND  JEWISH  NATIONALISM  15 


between  the  restoration  seen  in  the  Prophetic  visions  and 
the  restoration  for  which  Jewish  nationalists  are  working 
here  and  now.  That  complete  fulfilment  to  which  the 
Prophets  looked  forward  is  and  must  remain  a  distant  ideal, 
and  one  to  which  human  effort  can  stand  only  in  the  relation 
of  blind  groping,  not  in  that  of  conscious  and  well-calculated 
endeavor.  It  is  in  its  very  nature  catastrophic,  a  sudden 
and  complete  reversal  of  things  as  we  know  them.  To 
work  for  its  realization  would  be  like  working  to  bring 
about  a  volcanic  upheaval.  Zionism  is  concerned  with  mat- 
ters of  human  calculation  and  effort,  with  things  that  are, 
humanly  speaking,  attainable  by  a  gradual  evolution.  Bui 
there  is  of  course  no  contradiction  here,  though  there  is  a 
difference.  Zionism  has  suffered  at  times  from  being 
thought  (and  perhaps  from  being  in  fact)  anti-Messianic, 
and  at  other  times  from  indulging  in  visions  too  Messianic 
in  their  brightness.  Its  own  inner  development  and  the 
events  of  recent  years  have  given  it  equilibrium  and  the 
possibility  of  understanding  itself  as  a  typically  Jewish 
union  of  body  and  spirit — at  once  a  concrete,  practical 
attempt  to  re-establish  a  Jewish  national  settlement  in  Pal- 
estine, and  an  idea  which  derives  from  the  Prophets  and 
can  have  its  ultimate  fulfilment  only  in  the  fulfilment  of 
their  vision. 

II.  Recent  Jewish  Work  in  Palestine. 
In  actual  practice,  ideas  do  not  work  themselves  out  by 
their  own  motion,  and  their  realization  is  not  brought  about 
solely  or  even  mainly  by  the  efforts  of  those  whom  they 
consciously  inspire.  Human  beings  generally  need  the 
pressure  of  some  material  need  to  rouse  them  to  action  for 


16         PALESTINE  AND  JEWISH  NATIONALISM 


a  cause,  and  every  human  movement  can  be  interpreted 
with  some  degree  of  truth  as  a  reaction  to  material  stimuli. 
In  the  case  of  the  Jewish  national  movement  it  would  be 
absurd  to  ignore  the  material  pressure  which  led  numbers 
of  Jews  to  emigrate  to  Palestine  in  the  "eighties"  of  last 
century;  but  it  would  be  equally  absurd  to  represent  it  as 
having  created  the  national  sentiment  to  which  in  fact  it 
only  gave  an  incentive  to  action.  The  conscious  Jewish 
nationalism  of  modern  times — as  distinct  from  the  nation- 
alism which  is  implied  and  taken  for  granted  in  the  whole 
Jewish  scheme  of  things — began  as  a  reaction  not  against 
persecution  or  anti-Semitic  prejudice,  but  against  the  ten- 
dency to  assimilation  which  set  in  as  an  inevitable  result 
of  the  political  and  social  emancipation  of  the  Jews  in 
Western  Europe.  As  far  back  as  1862  a  German  Jew, 
Moses  Hess,  published  a  book  called  Rom  und  Jerusalem, 
in  which  he  subjected  to  a  scathing  analysis  the  prevalent 
assimilationist  conception  of  the  position  of  Judaism  in  the 
modern  world — that  conception  which  is  conveniently 
summed  up  in  the  phrase  "Englishman  (Frenchman,  Ger- 
man, etc.)  of  the  Jewish  persuasion" — demonstrated  the 
essentially  national  character  of  Judaism,  and  forecasted  the 
re-establishment  of  a  national  Jewish  commonwealth  in  Pal- 
estine under  French  auspices.  A  little  later  a  Russian 
Hebrew  writer,  Perez  Smolenskin  (1842-1885),  again  con- 
sciously attacking  the  assimilationist  tendency,  urged  the 
importance  of  Palestine,  along  with  the  Jewish  Law  (To- 
rah)  and  the  Hebrew  language,  as  a  vital  factor  in  Judaism. 
Nor  were  there  wanting  practical  efforts  towards  the  re- 
settlement of  Palestine.  To  say  nothing  of  the  schemes  of 
Sir  Moses  Montefiore  in  the  middle  of  the  last  century, 


PALESTINE  AND  JEWISH  NATIONALISM  17 


in  1870  the  Alliance  Israelite  Universelle  founded  an  Agri- 
cultural School  (called  Mikveh  Israel,  "The  Gathering  (or 
Hope)  of  Israel")  near  Jaffa.  This  step  was  taken  on  the 
suggestion  of  Hirsch  Kalischer,  a  Rabbi  of  Posen,  by 
whose  writings  Moses  Hess  had  been  influenced,  and  who 
himself  took  part  in  the  foundation  of  a  Jewish  agricultural 
settlement  near  the  Lake  of  Tiberias.  A  few  years  later 
some  Jews  of  Jerusalem  established  a  small  agricultural 
settlement  called  Petach  Tikvah  ("The  Gate  of  Hope")  on 
the  Audja,  which  is  now  the  largest  and  richest  of  the  forty 
or  more  Jewish  "colonies"  in  Palestine. 

But  it  was  unquestionably  the  terrible  outbreak  of  per- 
secution and  massacre  in  Russia,  in  1880-81,  which  finally 
gave  direction  to  the  nationalist  aspirations  that  were  float- 
ing in  the  air  of  Jewish  life.  While  the  great  tide  of  Jewish 
emigration  from  Russia  set  towards  America,  some  .of  the 
more  idealistic,  including  a  number  of  University  students, 
turned  to  Palestine,  hoping  not  only  to  win  a  better  life 
for  themselves,  but  to  set  their  people  on  the  way  to  na- 
tional redemption.  These  early  settlers  founded  agricul- 
tural "colonies"  in  Galilee,  in  Judea  and  in  Samaria,  and 
braved  with  extraordinary  stubbornness  the  manifold  diffi- 
culties with  which  their  undertaking  was  beset— difficulties 
which  were  enhanced  by  their  lack  of  means,  of  experience 
and  of  knowledge  of  the  country.  They  could  not  have 
survived  at  all  if  not  for  help  from  without.  This  help 
was  provided  in  the  first  place  by  societies  of  "Lovers  of 
Zion"  (Chovcve  Zion)  which  sprang  up  in  Russia,  and  later 
in  other  countries,  for  the  propagation  of  the  national  idea 
and  the  support  of  the  Palestinian  "colonies";  afterwards, 
and  in  larger  measure,  by  Baron  Edmond  de  Rothschild,  of 


18         PALESTINE  AND  JEWISH  NATIONALISM 


Paris.  Thanks  to  this  assistance  the  colonization  movement 
survived  the  ills  of  infancy,  and,  though  it  achieved  no  re- 
sults commensurate  with  the  hopes  of  its  early  sponsors, 
gained  at  least  the  possibility  of  development  when  circum- 
stances should  become  favorable. 

It  lies  outside  the  purpose  of  this  article  to  trace  the  his- 
tory of  Palestinian  colonization  in  detail.*  Suffice  it  to  say 
that  by  1895  some  twenty  "colonies"  were  established  in 
various  parts  of  the  country,  and  the  idea  which  underlay 
their  work,  the  idea  of  the  "Lovers  of  Zion,"  was  surely 
if  slowly  gaining  ground  in  the  Jewry  of  the  Dispersion. 
Then  an  event  occurred  which  gave  a  temporary  set-back 
to  colonization  work,  and  seemed  likely  to  divert  Jewish 
national  effort  for  good  and  all  into  other  channels.  Dr. 
Theodor  Herzl,  a  Viennese  Jew  living  in  Paris,  published 
a  brochure  called  Der  Judenstaat,  in  which  he  asserted  that 
the  Jewish  problem  could  be  solved  only  on  the  lines  of  the 
recognition  of  the  Jews  as  a  nation  and  the  provision  of  a 
territory  in  which  large  masses  of  Jews  could  live  under 
conditions  of  autonomy,  and  outlined  a  scheme  for  the  ac- 
quisition of  a  territory  under  the  necessary  international 
guarantees  and  the  transference  to  it  of  as  many  as  possible 
of  those  Jews  who  were  not  contented  in  their  present  sur- 
roundings. Herzl  received  his  immediate  impulse  from  the 
ugly  manifestation  of  French  anti-Semitism  in  the  Dreyfus 
affair :  and  that  fact  explains  both  the  strength  and  the  weak- 
ness of  his  scheme.  Jewish  national  effort  may  be  stimu- 
lated by  anti-Semitism ;  but  an  attempt  to  base  Jewish  na- 


*For  a  detailed  account  see  Palestine:  The*  Rebirth  of  an  An- 
cient People,  by  A.  M.  Hyamson  (Sidgwick  &  Jackson,  1917). 


PALESTINE  AND  JEWISH  NATIONALISM 


L9 


tionalism  entirely  on  anti-Semitism  ("the  pressure  from 
without  makes  us  one  people,"  says  Herzl)  is  doomed  to 
failure,  because  nationalism  is  a  positive  and  not  a  negative 
thing.  On  the  other  hand,  Herzl,  looking  at  the  Jewish 
problem  from  the  external  rather  than  from  the  internal 
point  of  view,  was  able  to  grasp  the  need  for  a  big  organiza- 
tion and  for  work  on  a  large  scale.  Had  there  not  been  a 
genuine  Jewish  national  movement — of  however  modest  di- 
mensions— in  existence,  Herzl  might  have  wasted  himself 
in  endeavoring  to  carry  out  a  purely  "political"  scheme 
which  ignored  the  real  character  of  the  Jewish  people  and 
the  really  vital  elements  of  Jewish  nationalism.  As  it  was, 
there  came  about  ultimately  a  fusion  between  Herzl  and  the 
"Lovers  of  Zion."  It  was  the  Russian  "Lovers  of  Zion" 
who  came  in  largest  numbers  to  the  first  Zionist  Congress, 
which  he  called  together  at  Basle  in  1897;  and  though  they 
were  on  the  whole  too  ready  to  yield  to  the  glamour  of  his 
large  political  ideas,  and  to  believe  him  capable  of  making 
bricks  without  straw,  they  at  least  secured  the  tying  down 
of  the  Zionist  programme  to  Palestine— a  point  which 
Herzl's  brochure  had  left  in  doubt.  This  notwithstanding, 
the  new  Zionist  movement  was  for  a  time  unsympathetic 
to  "petty  colonization,"  which  did  not  accord  with  Herzl's 
notion  of  getting  a  charter  and  purchasing  the  country  out- 
right. But  as  time  went  on  the  true  instinct  of  Jewish  na- 
tionalism asserted  itself.  During  Herzl's  lifetime  the  move- 
ment took  several  important  steps  in  the  direction  of  Pales- 
tinian work,  and  after  his  death  (1904)  the  diplomatic 
activity  in  which  he  had  excelled  sank  for  a  time  into  the 
background,  and  the  development  of  the  settlement  in  Pal- 
estine became  the  chief  care  of  the  movement.    The  net 


20         PALESTINE  AND  JEWISH  NATIONALISM 


results  of  Herzl's  work — and  they  were  invaluable — were 
the  publicity  given  to  Zionism,  and  the  creation  of  an  organ- 
ization which,  when  the  time  came,  would  be  able  to  assert 
the  claims  of  the  Jewish  people. 

That  organization  possessed,  at  J:he  time  when  the  war 
broke  out,  not  only  the  support  of  some  quarter  of  a  million 
Jews,  and  the  active  sympathy  of  many  more,  but  also  a 
concrete  basis  for  its  claims  in  the  Jewish  Yishub,  or  settle- 
ment in  Palestine.  The  number  of  agricultural  "colonies" 
had  grown  to  upwards  of  forty,  with  a  population  of  per- 
haps 12,000,  engaged  in  the  cultivation  of  vines,  oranges, 
almonds,  and  cereals.  Marsh  lands  had  been  drained  and 
made  habitable  and  fruitful.  Afforestation  had  been  begun 
on  a  small  scale.  The  Jewish  population  in  the  principal 
towns  had  grown  by  leaps  and  bounds,  and  garden  suburbs 
of  European  type  had  been  built  by  Jewish  energy  and 
capital.  A  proper  system  of  credit  had  been  introduced 
into  Palestine  by  the  Zionist  Bank,  the  Anglo-Palestine 
Company.  Farm-schools  and  an  Agricultural  Experiment 
Station  had  been  established.  Experiments  had  been  made 
in  co-operative  colonization  and  in  co-operative  workmen's 
settlements.  The  nucleus  had  been  formed  of  a  class  of 
agricultural  laborers  who  were  at  the  same  time  small  hold- 
ers. The  Jewish  "colonies,"  left  very  much  to  themselves 
by  the  Turkish  authorities  so  long  as  they  paid  their  taxes, 
had  dealt  successfully  with  the  problems  of  local  govern- 
ment, administration  of  justice,  and  defense.  A  beginning 
had  been  made  of  the  organization  of  the  "colonies"  for 
common  purposes  by  means  of  a  Council  consisting  of  rep- 
resentatives of  each.  At  the  same  time,  the  Yishub  had 
become  more  and  more  conscious  of  its  national  character 


PALESTINE  AND  JEWISH  NATIONALISM  21 


and  significance.  Hebrew  had  replaced  other  languages  as 
the  mother-tongue  of  the  younger  generation.  Hebrew 
schools  of  all  kinds,  including  a  music  school  and  a  school 
of  Arts  and  Crafts,  were  in  existence,  and  the  fust  steps 
had  been  taken  towards  the  foundation  of  a  Hebrew  Uni- 
versity. In  a  word,  there  was  scarcely  a  phase  of  national 
activity- — excluding  foreign  affairs — in  which  the  Jewish 
people,  through  this  small  advance-guard  in  Palestine,  had 
not  adventured.  Everything  was  on  a  small  scale,  much 
was  merely  inchoate  or  experimental.  But  a  national  life 
was  there  in  miniature. 

The  importance  of  this  achievement  in  colonization  is  not, 
of  course/  to  be  measured  by  its  size.  What  it  has  done  is  to 
place  beyond  doubt  the  will  and  the  ability  of  the  Jewish 
people  to  regenerate  Palestine  and  itself  in  and  through 
Palestine.  And  as  a  consequence  it  has  given  to  the  claims 
of  Zionism  a  solid  basis  such  as  they  could  not  have  ob- 
tained by  any  amount  of  organization  and  activity,  whether 
propagandist  or  political,  outside  Palestine.  The  Yishub, 
small  in  size  but  large  in  potentiality,  is  the  great  political 
asset  of  Zionism.  Without  it  the  sentimental  and  historic 
claims  of  the  Jewish  people  might  have  been  disregarded, 
as  they  have  been  before;  with  it,  they  have  become 
irresistible. 

The  potential  value  of  the  Jewish  colonization  of  Palestine 
— its  value  as  an  indication  of  what  the  Jews,  and  they  alone, 
can  make  of  Palestine— is  enhanced  by  the  fact  that  it  has 
been  carried  out  hitherto  in  spite  of  difficulties  created  not 
only  by  the  absence  of  any  State  organization  behind  it,  but 
by  the  shortcomings  of  Turkish  government.  It  must  in- 
deed be  said,  in  fairness  to  the  Turk,  that  from  the  Jewish 


22 


PALESTINE  AND  JEWISH  NATIONALISM 


national  point  of  view  his  rule  has  had  its  good  as  well  as  its 
bad  side.  Talaat  Pasha,  in  a  recent  interview,  made  much 
of  the  fact  that  anti-Semitism  was  unknown  in  Turkey,  and 
that  the  Jewish  "colonies"  in  Palestine  had  been  allowed 
freedom  in  local  administration  and  in  the  use  of  the 
Hebrew  language  for  educational  and  general  purposes.  He 
had  a  right  to  take  credit  for  this  tolerance,  which,  if  it  re- 
sulted rather  from  passivity  than  from  active  good  will  on 
the  side  of  the  rulers,  was  none  the  less  of  great  value  to 
the  ruled.  It  may  well  be  that  if  during  the  last  thirty  years 
Palestine  had  been  in  the  hands  of  an  efficient  and  central- 
ized government,  Jewish  colonization  might  have  progressed 
more  rapidly  on  the  material  side,  though  the  settlers  might 
have  been  much  less  easily  able  to  learn  the  rudiments  of 
self-government  and  to  retain  and  strengthen  their  specific 
national  consciousness.  But  there  is  a  heavy  account  on  the 
debit  side.  Not  only  has  Jewish  colonization  been  hampered 
by  burdensome  taxes,  restrictions  on  the  sale  of  land,  and 
the  neglect  of  the  Government  to  provide  those  material 
facilities  without  which  a  country  cannot  be  developed  on 
modern  lines,  but  the  absence  of  security  has  kept  out  of 
the  country  much  Jewish  energy  and  capital  which  would 
otherwise  have  flowed  into  it,  to  the  benefit  both  of  the 
Jewish  national  movement,  of  Palestine,  and  of  Turkey  as 
the  overlord  of  Palestine.  The  Turkish  revolution  of  1908, 
which  Zionists  welcomed  as  the  dawn  of  a  new  era  of  free- 
dom and  opportunity,  turned  out  in  fact  to  be  the  precursor 
of  a  policy  of  Turkification  which  was  even  more  fatal  to 
Jewish  national  effort  on  a  large  scale  than  the  laxity  of 
Abdul  Hamid's  regime;  and  since  the  war  broke  out  much 
has  happened  to  destroy  whatever  lingering  belief  Zionists 


PALESTINE  AND  JEWISH  NATIONALISM 


may  have  retained  in  the  possibility  of  achieving  their  ob- 
ject under  Ottoman  suzerainty.  It  is  clear,  therefore,  that 
Zionism  imperatively  needs  a  substantial  change— whether 
or  not  accompanied  by  a  formal  change— in  the  political 
position  of  Palestine  if  the  work  of  a  generation  is  not  to 
be  practically  wasted,  and  if  the  Jewish  people  is  not  to  be 
doomed  once  more  to  fall  back  on  hopes  and  prayers. 

III.  Political  Conditions  Necessary  for  a  Jewish 
Palestine 

There  is  room  for  divergence  of  opinion  as  to  the  precise 
settlement  of  the  political  problem  of  Palestine  which  would 
best  accord  with  the  legitimate  demands  of  Zionism  as  well 
as  with  the  wider  interests  that  are  necessarily  involved. 
But  so  far  as  the  Zionist  side  of  the  question  is  concerned, 
one  or  two  propositions  may  be  laid  down  with  certainly. 
In  the  first  place,  the  relation  between  the  Jewish  people 
and  Palestine  must  be  recognized  as  the  relation  between  a 
nation  and  its  national  homeland.  This  recognition  is  pro- 
vided by  the  British  Government's  declaration  of  Novem- 
ber 2,  1917,  while  the  peculiar  relationship  of  the  Jews  to 
Palestine  is  specifically  mentioned  in  the  programmes  of 
war-aims  formulated  both  by  the  British  Labor  Tarty  and 
by  the  international  Labor  Movements.  Secondly,  while 
Zionism  cannot  of  course  renounce  all  claim  to  ultimate 
political  independence  if  the  system  of  small  States  is  to 
continue— its  fundamental  postulate  being  that  the  Jewish 
people  is  to  have  the  opportunity  of  complete  and  unfettered 
self-expression— political  independence  for  the  Jews  of 
Palestine  would  be  a  mere  phrase  at  the  present  time  and 
in  the  immediate  future,  and  at  the  start  some  other  agency 


PALESTINE  AND  JEWISH  NATIONALISM 


must  secure  to  the  Jewish  people  adequate  facilities  for 
building  up  its  national  home  in  Palestine  on  the  foundations 
already  laid,  by  establishing  and  maintaining  law  and  order 
in  the  country,  by  making  proper  provision  for  its  defence 
against  aggression  from  without,  and  by  lending  sympathy 
and  active  support  to  Jewish  colonizing  work  in  the  broadest 
sense.    Thirdly,  and  as  a  consequence,  the  government  of 
Palestine  in  the  immediate  future  must  be  entrusted  to  a 
single  Power,  and  not  to  a  condominium  or  an  international 
commission.    There  is  much  loose  talk  about  the  "interna- 
tionalization" of  Palestine,  which,  however  well  meant,  is 
likely  to  do  more  harm  than  good.    For  experience  shows 
that  when  a  country  is  controlled  by  two  or  more  Powers 
each  of  them  is  likely  to  care  more  about  pushing  its  own 
interests  than  about  the  welfare  of  the  country;  and,  how- 
ever ardently  one  may  hope  for  and  believe  in  the  growth 
of  a  better  spirit  in  international  relations,  only  a  rash 
optimism  could  expect  progress  in  that  direction  to  be  other 
than  slow  and  gradual.    Equally  bad  would  it  be,  from  the 
Zionist  point  of  view,  if  the  Powers  contented  themselves 
with  declaring  Palestine  neutral.    A  purely  negative  policy 
of  that  kind  would  not  give  the  Jewish  people  the  help  that 
it  needs  if  the  promise  of  the  Allies  is  to  be  made  effective. 
"Internationalization,"  then,  in  any  sense  which  can  be  at- 
tached to  the  term  at  present,  is  to  be  avoided.    This  is 
not,  of  course,  to  say  that  international  consent  is  not 
desirable.    Nothing  could  better  accord  with  the  interests 
of  the  Jewish  people  and  of  Palestine  than  the  universal 
recognition  of  the  Jewish  national  claim,  and  the  creation 
of  such  conditions  as  would  secure  Palestine  against  be- 
coming again  a  bone  of  international  contention.   And  that 


PALESTINE  AND  JEWISH  NATIONALISM  25 


end  might  be  secured  if  whatever  Power  undertook  the 
control  of  Palestine  did  so  as  the  mandatory  of  the  Powers 
in  general.  But  the  possibility  of  a  solution  on  those  linos 
depends  on  the  question  whether  something  in  the  shape  of 
a  real  League  of  Nations  is  going  to  emerge  from  the  pres- 
ent war.  If  that  aspiration  is  realized,  it  will  be  eminently 
fitting  for  one  of  the  Powers  to  act  for  the  League  as 
sovereign  of  Palestine  during  the  period  that  must  elapse 
before  the  Jewish  nation  can  grow  to  full  maturity. 

The  governing  authority,  whatever  it  be,  would,  as 
Zionists  frankly  recognize,  have  responsibilities  and  obliga- 
tions to  others  beside  the  Jews.  Palestine  is  at  present,  as 
it  has  been  for  centuries,  peopled  mainly  by  Arabs.  Ac- 
cording to  the  figures  available  before  the  war,  the  Jewish 
population  numbers  roughly  125,000  in  a  total  of  about 
700,000.  Moreover,  sacred  though  it  is  to  the  Jews,  Pales- 
tine holds  within  its  borders  shrines  sacred  to  Christians  and 
Mohammedans  also,  and  the  Jews  have  no  desire  to  intrude 
in  any  way  upon  the  Holy  Places  of  those  religions.  They 
only  claim  to  be  allowed  to  be  neighbors:  and,  in  the  his- 
toric phrase  uttered  by  Pope  Benedict  XV.  to  the  Zionist 
ambassador,  their  hope  and  belief  is  that  they  will  be  "good 
neighbors."  They  recognize  too  that  Palestine  has  been 
and  may  be  again  a  pawn  in  the  game  of  international 
rivalry:  and  though  they  earnestly  desire  to  be  allowed  to 
work  out  their  own  national  destiny  in  peace,  they  do  not 
wish  to  interfere  with  the  claims,  or  to  be  involved  in  the 
jealousies,  of  any  of  the  Powers.  The  present  situation  is 
too  uncertain  and  too  full  of  difficulty  for  Zionists  to  debate 
the  question  whether  Palestine  will  ever  become  a  pre- 
dominantly Jewish  country,  or  still  more,  a  self-governing 


26         PALESTINE  AND  JEWISH  NATIONALISM 


Jewish  Commonwealth.  Many  years  must  pass  before  such 
issues  will  arise  in  practical  shape.  Yet  it  may  not  be  an 
unfitting  conclusion  to  this  article  to  project  our  gaze  for- 
ward into  a  period  when  Jewish  enterprise  and  Jewish  in- 
dustry have  had  time  to  leave  their  mark  upon  the  life  and 
institutions  of  the  country.  What  follows  then  must  be 
read,  not  as  a  claim  or  a  programme,  but  as  embodying  the 
natural  aspirations  of  a  nation  long  exiled  from  its  home. 

IV.  Functions  and  Influence  of  a  Iewish  Palestine 
What  a  revived  Hebrew  nation  in  Palestine  may  mean  to 
humanity  in  the  future  may  conveniently  be  considered  un- 
der two  heads — first,  the  direct  influence  on  the  world's 
history  of  the  development  of  Hebrew  national  life  in  Pales- 
tine itself ;  secondly,  the  indirect  influence  which  the  Hebrew 
national  centre  will  exert  through  the  Jewish  communities 
in  other  parts  of  the  world.  For,  however  rapidly  and  suc- 
cessfully the  Jewish  settlement  in  Palestine  may  grow  un- 
der more  favorable  conditions  than  have  prevailed  hitherto, 
for  many  generations  at  least,  if  not  for  all  time,  the  numeri- 
cal majority  of  the  Jewish  people  will  remain  outside  Pales- 
tine, and  the  Jewries  of  the  Dispersion  cannot  be  left  out 
of  account  in  any  forecast  of  the  part  which  the  Jewish 
people  may  play  in  centuries  to  come.  Such  a  forecast  must 
naturally  be  speculative;  but  if  certainty  is  unattainable  in 
a  matter  of  this  kind,  some  developments  may  be  regarded 
at  least  as  probable. 

Jewish  effort  in  the  past  generation  has  already  reclaimed 
parts  of  Palestine  which  had  been  swamp  or  desert  for  cen- 
turies. With  increasing  Jewish  immigration  and  improved 
facilities,  this  work  of  reclamation  should  proceed  apace, 


PALESTINE  AND  JEWISH  NATIONALISM 


until  at  last  the  potentialities  of  the  country  are  realized  to 
the  full.  What  those  potentialities  are  is  still  a  matter  of 
some  doubt:  in  particular,  it  is  doubtful  whether  Palestine 
has  the  natural  resources  that  are  necessary  for  the  build- 
ing up  of  industries  on  a  large  scale.  But  there  is  no  doubt 
whatever  that  the  agricultural  productivity  of  the  country 
can  be  vastly  increased ;  and  it  is  equally  certain  that  with 
proper  harbors  and  railways  it  can  become  as  of  old  a 
great  highway  of  communication  between  the  Mediterranean 
and  the  East.  Palestine  has,  then,  an  economic  future;  ami 
in  making  the  most  of  its  economic  possibilities  the  fews 
will  not  merely  lay  a  secure  foundation  for  their  own  na- 
tional life,  but  will  enrich  the  world  by  the  addition  of  one 
more  to  the  number  of  productive  territories. 

This  economic  development  will  be  fruitful  of  benefit  to 
the  Arab  inhabitants  of  Palestine  and  the  neighboring  lands. 
The  Palestinian  Arabs  have  already  gained  considerably  as 
a  result  of  Jewish  colonization  work,  with  its  modern  inten- 
sive methods  of  agriculture,  its  scientific  appliances,  its  west- 
ern ideas  of  hygiene  and  business  methods.  There  is  every 
reason  to  hope  that  future  Jewish  development  in  Palestine 
will  react  favorably  on  the  economic  condition  and  the  cul- 
ture not  only  of  the  Arabs  in  Palestine,  but  of  tlie  Arab 
kingdom  of  the  Hedjaz.  The  Arabs  are  apt  to  be  regarded 
as  a  backward  race,  constitutionally  incapable  of  joining  in 
the  omvard  march  of  modern  civilization.  It  is  difficult  to 
believe  that  charge  of  a  nation  with  such  an  illustrious  rec- 
ord of  civilizing  work  in  the  past.  Put  for  centuries  the 
Arab  has  not  had  a  chance.  The  rule  of  the  Turk,  though 
sympathetic  to  him  from  the  religious  point  of  view,  is 
politically  oppressive,  and  makes  for  stagnation  rather  than 


28         PALESTINE  AND  JEWISH  NATIONALISM 


for  progress.  With  the  European  he  has  too  little  kinship 
of  ideas  and  temperament  to  be  capable  of  learning  from 
him  what  the  West  ought  to  teach  the  East.  But  there  is  a 
very  real  kinship  between  Jew  and  Arab — a  kinship  not 
merely  of  blood,  not  merely  of  language,  not  merely  of 
religion  (for  Islam  owes  more  to  Judaism  than  even  Chris- 
tianity), but  of  joint  work  in  the  diffusion  of  knowledge. 
It  was  the  Arab  and  the  Jew  who  brought  scholarship  and 
medicine  into  Europe  at  the  beginning  of  the  Middle  Ages. 
Jewish  philosophers  and  scientists  got  their  knowledge  of 
Greek  thought  from  the  Arabs,  and  brought  that  knowledge 
with  them  into  Europe.  The  Jews  thus  owe  the  Arabs  a 
debt  which  they  should  be  eager  and  able  to  repay  when 
their  genius  has  free  scope  in  a  national  life  of  their  own 
and  the  Arabs  are  their  closest  neighbors.  Coming  to  the 
Arabs  not  as  strangers  from  an  entirely  different  world,  but 
as  kinsmen  who  have  gained  a  rich  experience  during  ages 
of  separation,  they  will  help  the  Arabs  by  the  influence 
and  example  to  adapt  themselves  to  modern  conditions,  and, 
side  by  side,  the  two  races  will  realize  their  national  pos- 
sibilities. 

In  its  co-operation  with  the  Arabs  the  Hebrew  nation  of 
the  future  will  be  fulfilling  a  part,  but  only  a  part,  of  the 
function  which  should  properly  fall  to  it  of  acting  as  medi- 
ator between  East  and  West.  For  Palestine  will  not  merely 
become  a  highway  of  commerce  in  the  material  sense:  it  will 
be  a  meeting-place  of  ideas  and  civilizations.  Politically  it 
may  have  to  be  a  kind  of  buffer-State ;  spiritually  it  will  be 
the  converse.  Instead  of  serving  as  a  barrier,  which  is  the 
function  of  the  buffer-State,  it  will  hold  open  the  door  be- 
tween East  and  West,  and  will  help  each  to  a  better  under- 


PALESTINE  AND  JEWISH  NATIONALISM 


standing  of  the  other.  Nor  will  it  simply  act  as  a  transmit- 
ter of  ideas :  it  will  make  its  own  positive  contribution  to 
the  problem  of  harmonizing  the  divergent  conceptions  of 
East  and  West.  For  centuries  the  Jews  have  been  inter- 
mediaries in  the  sphere  of  ideas  as  in  that  of  commerce: 
that  was  the  natural  metier  of  a  people  intellectually  gifted, 
but  lacking  a  solid  basis  of  its  own,  and  doomed  always  to 
wander  from  continent  to  continent  in  search  of  a  resting 
place.  A  restored  Jewish  nation  in  Palestine  will  aspire  to 
something  higher  than  that.  It  will  be  creative,  not  merely 
imitative;  it  will  be,  spiritually  if  not  economically,  a  manu- 
facturing and  not  merely  a  trading  nation.  And  its  creative 
work  wiir^express  a  spirit  subtly  compounded  of  elements 
from  East  and  West— the  eastern  passion  for  righteousness, 
for  ideas,  fof  God,  combined  with  western  initiative  and 
appreciation  of  the  possibilities  of  man's  command  over  na- 
ture. A  Hebrew  University  in  Palestine,  re-interpreting 
the  ideas  of  the  Prophets  in  terms  adapted  to  the  modern 
world,  might  draw  students  from  distant  East  and  distant 
West  alike,  and  send  them  back  to  their  homes  with  an  out- 
look not  merely  widened  by  intercourse  with  men  of  the 
most  widely  different  types,  but  deepened  by  contact  with 
those  spiritual  truths  of  which  Israel  is  still  the  guardian, 
and  at  present  the  mute  guardian.  In  international  politics, 
again,  which  will  become  more  and  more  concerned  with 
the  relations  between  East  and  West,  a  Jewish  Palestine 
might  fulfil  an  important  function  as  the  seal  of  a  Court 
of  Arbitration.  Both  sentiment  and  geography  point  to 
Palestine  as  of  all  countries  the  best  suited  for  this  purpose ; 
while  the  ideal  of  international  brotherhood  is  so  woven  into 
the  very  fabric  of  Jewish  national  sentiment  that  concrete 


30         PALESTINE  AND  JEWISH  NATIONALISM 


association  with  the  cause  of  international  peace  would  be 
one  of  the  most  natural  manifestations  of  the  Jewish  spirit. 
A  Court  of  Arbitration  at  Jerusalem  would  not  be  an  exotic  ; 
it  would  he  a  real  expression  of  Hebrew  national  life,  and 
its  moral  force  would  be  enhanced  for  that  reason. 

Both  spiritually  and  politically,  then,  a  Jewish  Palestine 
may  do  much  towards  establishing  that  world-harmony,  that 
accommodation  and  fusion  of  different  conceptions,  with- 
out which  mere  international  settlements  can  be  of  no  avail. 
And  in  such  a  task  Jewish  nationalism  would  be  working  in 
close  accord  with  the  ideals  of  the  British  Commonwealth. 
For'it  is  one  of  the  primary  functions  of  the  Commonwealth, 
stretching  as  it  does  across  the  Old  World  and  the  New,  to 
bridge  the  age-long  gulf  between  East  and  West,  to  create 
and  delevop  a  sense  of  human  brotherhood  and  civic  fel- 
lowship between  their  peoples. 

Lastly,  and  not  least  important,  the  Hebrew  nation  in 
Palestine  should  justify  itself  by  contributing  something  of 
value  to  the  solution  of  social  problems.  Eve'n  in  modern 
Europe,  under  conditions  of  assimilation  in  which  the  es- 
sential character  and  ideals  of  the  Jew  tend  to  be  submerged, 
the  Jewish  passion  for  social  justice  has  shown  itself  time 
and  again  in  individuals.  Jews  have  been  prominent  where- 
ever  there  has  been  a  fight  for  liberty  and  equality  within 
the  State.  In  a  Jewish  Palestine  this  fundamental  and 
ineradicable  quality  of  the  Jew  would  have  free  play;  and 
its  fruits  would  be  the  more  valuable  in  that  it  would  be 
able  to  express  itself  in  constructive  wrork.  Circumstances 
have  too  often  driven  the  Jew  in  modern  Europe  into  the 
revolutionary  camp.  But  he  is  not  by  nature  a  revolution- 
ary.  He  has  a  strong  sense  of  social  solidarity  and  a  deep- 


PALESTINE  AND  JEWISH  NATIONALISM 


seated  regard  for  human  life  as  a  thing  of  value  in  itself; 
and  his  individualism  is  tempered  by  an  instinctive  reverence 
for  law  and  a  habit  of  defining  moral  obligations  with  legal 
precision.  A  people  with  these  characteristics  should  be 
capable  of  building  a  social  fabric  possessing  the  elements 
both  of  stability  and  of  progress,  and  of  adjusting  aright 
the  claims  of  the  individual  and  of  the  community.  More- 
over, the  conditions  in  Palestine  are  favorable  to  a  new  ex- 
periment in  social  evolution.  On  the  one  hand,  the  very 
atmosphere  of  Palestine  at  once  recalls  to  the  Jew  the 
social  ideals  of  the  Prophets.  On  the  other  hand,  he  can 
start  his  work  there  with  the  aid  of  all  the  science  and  ex- 
perience of  modern  Europe,  a»d  yet  without  the  need  for 
that  constant  struggle  against  the  dead  weight  of  outworn 
prejudices  and  institutions  which  nullifies  so  much  of 
the  energy  of  the  reformers  in  a  country  of  long-established 
economic  and  social  traditions.  The  Jews  in  Palestine  will 
have  no  relics  of  feudalism-  to  fight  against.  The  political 
equality  of  men  and  women,  towards  which  the  nations  of 
Europe  struggle  so  slowly  and  painfully,  is  already  an  ac- 
complished fact  in  the  small  Jewish  settlements  in  Palestine. 
Democratic  government  and  co-operative  institutions  are 
matters  of  course.  The  Hebrew  nation  has  the  advantage 
of  beginning  at  a  point  which  it  has  taken  Europe  centuries 
to  reach,  and  of  being  able  to  experiment  with  the  minimum 
of  risk  and  of  friction.  Herzl,  in  his  prophetic  sketch  of  the 
restored  Jewish  community,  described  it  as  Altneuland  (Old- 
New  Land),  and  the  name  will  prove  an  apt  one.  Before 
long  the  characteristic  spirit  of  the  nation  will  express  itself 
in  social  reform  as  in  art  and  literature,  and  it  will  give  as 
well  as  take  in  that  interplay  of  ideas  through  which  values 


32 


PALESTINE  AND  JEWISH  NATIONALISM 


created  by  one  nation  become  the  property  of  all.  It  may 
even  be  that  from  the  Judea  of  the  future  there  will  go 
forth  to  the  world  another  great  wave  of  religious  and  moral 
inspiration,  to  break,  not  wholly  in  vain,  on  the  rock  of 
materialism.  At  least,  a  world  which  has  done  homage  to 
the  Jewish  Prophets  of  the  past  will  not  think  the  worse  of 
the  Jew  if  his  national  ambition  takes  the  form  of  aspiring 
to  produce  successors  of  the  Prophets  in  time  to  come. 

Meanwhile,  the  Jewish  communities  of  the  Dispersion 
will  have  felt  the  beneficial  effects  of  the  establishment  of 
a  Jewish  national  home  in  Palestine  both  in  their  inner  life 
and  in  their  relations  with  their  neighbors.  There  has 
been  much  misapprehension,  partly  genuine  and  partly  af- 
fected, about  the  effect  of  the  restoration  of  Jewish  na- 
tional life  on  the  political  and  social  status  of  the  Jewish 
communities  outside  Palestine.  Some  fear,  or  profess  to 
fear,  that  when  the  Jewish  nation  has  once  more  a  political 
existence  of  its  own  Jews  will  no  longer  be  allowed  to 
exercise  the  rights  of  citizenship  in  non-Jewish  lands,  or 
even  that  they  may  be  compelled  to  leave  those  lands  for 
their  own.  It  was  no  doubt  to  allay  such  apprehensions 
that  the  British  Government's  endorsement  of  Zionism  was 
accompanied  by  a  proviso  safeguarding  the  "rights  and  po- 
litical status"  of  the  Jewish  communities  in  countries  other 
than  Palestine.  This  proviso  is  valuable  as  placing  on  rec- 
ord the  British  Government's  recognition  of  the  fact  that 
there  is  no  inherent  incompatibility  between  the  realization 
of  Zionist  aims  and  the  continued  enjoyment  by  Jews  of 
social  and  political  equality  in  Great  Britain  or  any  other 
country.  It  does  not,  and  in  the  nature  of  things  could  not, 
afford  any  guarantee,  because  no  Government  could  bind 


PALESTINE  AND  JEWISH  NATIONALISM 


its  successors,  still  less  the  Governments  of  other  countries, 
as  to  the  course  to  be  adopted  in  circumstances  which  have 
not  yet  arisen.  But  no  such  guarantee  is  necessary.  Only 
prejudice  or  loose  thinking  could  set  up  the  contention  that 
the  constitution  of  a  Jewish  nation  in  Palestine— even  if  it 
had  full  State  sovereignty — would  necessitate  a  change  of 
political  allegiance  on  the  part  of  any  single  Jew  who  be- 
longed by  citizenship  to  another  State;  and  if  the  appre- 
hension of  loss  of  equal  rights  does  not  rest  on  that  conten- 
tion, it  rests  on  nothing.  For,  when  once  it  is  recognized 
that  a  Jew  born  in  England,  and  exercising  the  rights  of 
citizenship  according  to  the  law  of  England,  can  owe  no 
political  allegiance  to  a  Jewish  State  in  Palestine  unless  he 
goes  to  live  in  that  State  and  becomes  its  subject  by  process 
of  naturalization,  it  becomes  obvious  that  the  creation  of  a 
Jewish  State  no  more  affects  the  political  position  of  that 
particular  Jew  than  would  the  creation  of  a  Hottentot  State. 
It  may,  indeed,  be  contended  that  the  existence  of  a  Jewish 
State,  or  even  of  a  Jewish  national  home,  would  lend  a 
handle  to  those  anti-Semites  who  wish  to  rid  their  own 
countries  of  Jews,  but  cannot  make  out  a  plausible  case 
for  expulsion,  or  for  such  restrictive  legislation  as  would 
force  Jews  to  emigrate,  so  long  as  the  Jew  has  no  place  of 
his  own  to  which  he  can  go.  But  there  is  a  simple  answer 
to  that  argument.  If  the  nations  which  have  granted  equal 
rights  to  Jews  are  capable  of  retrogressing  so  far  as  to 
substitute  a  policy  of  persecution  for  one  of  toleration,  it 
would  be  absurd  on  the  part  of  the  Jews  to  expect  to  find 
in  their  own  homelessness  a  shield  against  the  evil  which 
threatens  them.  Experience  in  Russia  (under  the  old  re- 
gime) and  elsewhere  proves  that  a  country  which  for  one 


34         PALESTINE  AND  JEWISH  NATIONALISM 


reason  or  another  is  predisposed  towards  an  anti-Semitic 
policy  is  not  deterred  from  carrying  it  out  by  the  consider- 
ation that  the  Jews  have  no  country  of  their  own.  If,  then, 
it  be  assumed  that  other  States  will  in  future  model  their 
treatment  of  the  Jews  on  Czarist  Russia,  what  ground  is 
there  for  supposing  that  it  will  make  any  difference  whether 
there  is  or  is  not  a  Jewish  national  home?  The  fact  is 
that  the  Jews,  as  a  scattered  people,  must  always  depend 
on  the  liberality  and  enlightenment  of  the  States  in  which 
they  live  (or  at  any  rate  of  those  States  which  are  too 
strong  to  fear  punishment  or  reprisals  at  the  hands  of  a 
Jewish  State  if  one  exists) ;  and  if  the  civilized  world  is 
going  to  relapse  into  chauvinistic  intolerance,  the  outlook 
for  the  Jews  is  so  bad  that  they  would  be  well  advised 
to  secure  at  least  a  corner  of  the  earth  where  they  can  hope 
to  be  beyond  the  reach  of  anti-Semitism.  But  there  is  no 
reason  so  to  despair  of  human  progress,  at  any  rate  within 
a  year  of  the  Russian  Revolution. 

To  obtain  an  idea  of  what  is  really  likely  to  be  the  effect 
of  the  realization  of  Zionist  aims  on  the  position  of  the 
Jewries  of  the  Dispersion,  it  is  necessary  to  realize  first  of 
all  what  sort  of  relation  will  exist  between  those  Jewries 
and  the  national  home  in  Palestine.  That  there  must  be 
some  sort  of  relation  goes  without  saying:  otherwise  the 
term  "Jewish"  must  become  a  misnomer  as  applied  either 
to  the  community  in  Palestine  or  to  the  communities  outside 
Palestine,  or  to  all  alike.  To  assume  that  there  will  still 
be  a  Jewish  people,  with  a  national  home  in  Palestine  and 
settlements  outside  Palestine,  is  to  assume  that  spiritual 
continuity  with  the  Judaism  of  the  past  and  the  present 
will  be  maintained  both  in  Palestine  and  outside  it.  And 


PALESTINE  AND  JEWISH  NATIONALISM 


it  is  precisely  for  this  maintenance  of  spirtual  continuity, 
that  the  national  home  will  be  of  greatest  value  to  the  people 
as  a  whole.    Its  chief  function,  regarded  purely  from  the" 
point  of  view  of  the  Jewish  people,  will  be— to  use  a  phrase 
made  famous  by  Achad  ha-Am,  the  "master  of  those  Who 
know"  in  Jewish  nationalism— that  of  a  "spiritual  centre." 
Embodying  in  its  own  life  what  is  best  and  most  character- 
istic in  the  Hebraic  outlook,  the  national  home  will  be  to 
the  scattered  Jewish  communities  a  pattern  on  which  they 
can  model  themselves  in  their  attempt  to  realize  Judaism 
in  their  own  lives.   Politically  and  economically  the  Hebrew 
nation  in  Palestine  will  move  along  lines  determined  by  its 
own  needs  and  circumstances,  and  the  path  which  it  takes 
will  have  no  direct  bearing  on  the  position  and  the  problem 
of  extra-Palestinian  Jewry.   But  in  the  realm  of  the  spirit, 
in  ideas,  in  religion,  in  ethics,  it  will  exert  a  profound  influ- 
ence on  the  Jews  of  the  world.    They  will  turn  to  i!  per- 
force  for  a  truer  undertsanding  of  what  Judaism  essentially 
is,  and  of  how  far  traditional  Judaism  requires' adaptation, 
and  how  it  can  be  adapted,  to  modern  conditions;  they  will 
look  to  it  in  large  measure  for  their  preachers  and  their 
teachers;  its  scholars  will  help  them  to  a  deeper  Insight  into 
their  national  past,  its  poets  will  give  them  a  new  vision 
of  their  national  future ;  they  will  send  their  sons  and  daugh- 
ters to  its  schools  and  universities,  to  come  back  with  a 
quickened  Jewish  consciousness  and  a  healthy  pride  of  race. 
By  virtue  of  a  conscious  individuality  of  outlook  which  will 
give  their  language,  their  history,  and  their  customs  a  value 
in  their  own  eyes  and  in  those  of  their  neighbors,  they  will 
gain  a  new  sense  of  dignity  and  of  self-respect,  and  will 
meet  their  fellow-citizens  on  equal  terms,  knowing  that  in 


PALESTINE  AND  JEWISH  NATIONALISM 


the  commerce  of  ideas  they  can  give  as  well  as  receive. 
So  the  Jewish  communities  of  the  world,  each  adapting 
itself  to  the  political  and  economic  conditions  of  its  environ- 
ment, will  yet  remain  united  by  a  spiritual  bond,  and  will 
transmit  to  the  world  whatever  of  value  the  national  centre 
has  to  give. 

Nor  will  this  renewal  of  national  spirit  in  the  Jew  benefit 
his  race  alone:  it  will  also  benefit  all  those  with  whom  they 
live.  Keen-sighted  statesmen  and  thinkers  in  most  coun- 
tries where  there  is  a  large  Jewish  population  have  favored 
the  Zionist  movement  because  they  have  recognized  that 
•  Zionism,  whilst  making  its  disciples  better  Jews,  makes 
them  also  better  citizens  of  the  States  to  which  they  belong. 
It  is  no  accident  that  the  leader  of  American  Zionism  should 
have  stood  in  the  van  of  the  social  reform  movement  in  the 
United  States  and  should  have  won  his  way  by  his  untiring 
devotion  to  public  service  to  a  seat  on  the  Bench  of  the 
Supreme  Court.  It  may  indeed  be  hoped  that,  when  the 
promise  of  Zionism  is  fulfilled  and  its  harvest  is  gathered 
in,  many  time-honored  prejudices  against  the  Jew  will  be 
at  last  destroyed.  For  his  fellow-citizens  will  be  no  longer 
tempted  to  regard  him  as  a  homeless  man,  a  man  who  has 
lost  his  national  birthright,  and  therefore  in  some  vague 
sense  inferior  to  themselves,  incapable  of  service  as  whole- 
hearted as  their  own  to  the  State  of  his  adoption,  at  the 
worst  a  parasite  in  the  body  politic.  Not  least  among  the 
fruits  of  the  renascence  of  Jewish  nationality  will  be  a 
fuller  sense  of  civic  equality  and  human  brotherhood  be- 
tween Jew  and  Gentile  throughout  the  world. 

A  few  words  may  be  said,  in  conclusion,  as  to  one  par- 
ticular effect  which  the  realization  of  the  Zionist  ideal  ought 


PALESTINE  AND  JEWISH  NATIONALISM 


37 


naturally  to  have  on  the  development  of  political  thought 
and  pract.ee.  Of  all  the  questions  which  the  present  war 
has  brought  to  the  forefront  of  men's  minds  there  is  none 
more  important  and  more  insistently  demanding  solution 
than  that  of  the  relation  of  the  conceptions  of  State  and 
Nationality.  Throughout  the  nineteenth  century  the  pre 
vailing  idea  in  Europe  was  that  Stale  and  Nationality  should 
be  co-terminous;  each  nation,  however  small  and  however 
unfitted  for  self-government,  should  have  the  complete  ma- 
chinery and  independence  of  a  sovereign  State.  It  was  a 
period,  therefore,  of  the  creation  of  petty  States  and  -what 
is  worse  for  the  cause  of  peace— of  irredentist  movements. 
And  if  the  conception  of  the  nation-slate  is  to  retain  its 
predominance  in  political  thinking,  there  will  assuredly  be 
no  end  of  irredentism  and  no  end  of  war.  The  only  hope 
lies  in  the  general  acceptance  of  the  opposite  conception, 
according  to  which  the  ideal  arrangement  is  that  of  a  mini 
her  of  nations  grouped  together  for  the  conduct  of  the  af- 
fairs which  concern  them  all  in  common,  hut  maintaining 
each  its  own  individuality  in  language  and  culture,  and 
endowed  with  a  sufficient  measure  of  internal  autonomy. 
The  British  Commonwealth  comes  nearer  than  any  political 
organism  of  the  present  or  the  past  to  realizing  this  ideal. 
The  new  Russia  may  perhaps  in  course  of  time  approximate 
to  it.  But  the  day  is  yet  far  distant  when  the  world  as  a 
whole  will  be  organized  on  the  basis  of  large  groups  of 
nations  in  free  association  for  State  purposes,  and  any  new 
force  which  will  strengthen  the  tendency  in  that  direction, 
theoretically  or  practically,  should  be  welcomed  by  those 
who  hope  for  real  progress  in  international  relations.  Now 
in  so  far  as  the  Jewish  people  develops  along  the  lines 


38 


PALESTINE  AND  JEWISH  NATIONALISM 


here  foreshadowed — and  they  are  lines  which  it  must  follow 
if  it  remains  true  to  itself — it  will  be  a  force  making  in  that 
direction.  For  the  existence  of  Jewish  communities  all  over 
the  world,  keenly  conscious  of  their  national  distinctiveness, 
spiritually  attached  to  their  own  national  home,  yet  sharing 
politically  and  economically  the  struggles  and  the  fortunes 
of  the  peoples  among  whom  they  live,  will  be  an  object- 
lesson  in  the  true  distinction  and  the  right  relation  between 
State  and  Nationality.  It  will  strengthen  the  hands  of  all 
those  who  are  thinking  and  working  for  the  great  cause 
of  removing  the  international  rivalries  and  animosities  which 
have  now  plunged  the  world  in  chaos.  The  Jewish  nation, 
alike  at  its  centre  and  at  its  circumference,  will  help  to 
show  mankind  that  a  nation's  life  is  best  lived,  not  in  iso- 
lation and  conflict,  but  in  community  and  co-operation;  that 
1  nationality  is  essentially  a  thing  of  the  spirit,  not  bound  up 
*  with  and  fettered  by  political  machinery,  but  working  freely 
in  the  hearts  and  minds  of  men,  and  expressing  itself  in 
the  effort  of  different  human  groups  to  approach  the  same 
summit  by  different  roads,  each  striving  upwards  along  the 
path  marked  out  for  it  by  its  own  character  and  spirit. 


BROOKLYN   EAGLE  PRESS 


